Acclaimed author Matt Ridley traces the colourful life of the man who discovered the structure of DNA, the building blocks of life.

Synopsis:

Acclaimed author Matt Ridley traces the colourful life of the man who discovered the structure of DNA, the building blocks of life.Building on a biographical tradition that can be traced back to Aubrey's `Brief Lives', Dr Johnson's `Lives of the Poets' and Lytton Strachey's `Eminent Victorians', this exciting and ground-breaking new series pairs great biographers, historians and novelists with iconic subjects, the writing bristling with original and distinctive points of view.On 28 February 1953, Francis Crick walked into the Eagle pub in Cambridge and announced that he and his American colleague James Watson `had found the secret of life'. In fact, they had indeed done so. That morning, Crick and Watson had worked out the structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). They had discovered its 'double helix' form, one which could replicate itself, confirming theories that it carried life's hereditary information.Matt Ridley's life of Crick begins with his birth in 1916 at the home of a shoe factory owner, his early explosive experiments at primary school and time developing torpedoes in the Navy. After his seismic DNA discovery, which won him the Nobel Prize before he'd even gained a PhD, the scientist's later work was rarely uncontroversial. From California, he proposed that life began when micro-organisms from another planet were dropped here by a spaceship sent to Earth, and maintained that the 'human soul' was entirely explicable in terms of brain activity. Matt Ridley's entertaining account traces the colourful and entirely original work behind one of mankind's greatest discoveries and displays the life of a scientist considered of the very first rank.

Winner of the Costa Children's Book Award, Winner of the London Book Fair Children's Travel Book of the Year
From his seat in the tiny aeroplane, Fred watches as the mysteries of the Amazon jungle pass by below him.
He has always dreamed of becoming an explorer, of making history and of reading his name amongst the lists of great discoveries.
If only he could land and look about him. As the plane crashes into the canopy, Fred is suddenly left without a choice.
He and the three other children may be alive, but the jungle is a vast, untamed place.
With no hope of rescue, the chance of getting home feels impossibly small. Except, it seems, someone has been there before them

In the desolate remains of a post-apocalyptic earth, two territories survive: Earthland and Opulence. Earthland is a forbidding domain, where its inhabitants consist of mutated animals and crazed humans, amongst which, pockets of a surviving civilisation strive to exist.

Nancy Parker has a new job, she's accompanying her old school teacher Miss Lamb as a ladies' maid to Midwinter Manor. But things take a turn for the worst when Nancy discovers a dead body in the library. With a house full of strange guests, who could possibly be the murderer?